Smartphone Shipments Increase, While Prices Decrease Globally

As we become more and more mobile in our lives, our connection to the web and everything that it brings becomes more and more mobile as well. In direct relation to having a constant need to get instant updates from social feeds, movie times, dinner recipes, and the occasional You Tube video, smartphone shipments are set to increase by 39.3% to a number of 1 billion handsets by the end of the year IDC reports. That’s close to the entire population of China. While that is a staggering number, that still leaves plenty of room for growth in the smartphone department. IDC predicts that by the end of 2017 we will see 1.7 billion handsets shipped annually. We already know that the US and many other markets like it are saturated with smartphone users, so the incline in shipments and sales that we see is thanks to up and coming markets as well as manufacturers that took notice of this and responded by offering these markets lower cost devices.As per logic of supply and demand, with an incline in shipments of smartphones(the number is expected to continue increasing annually) IDC also predicts that prices of smartphone devices will decrease globally by about 12.8%. Because up and coming markets are just starting to see an increase in a better selection of available smartphones, one thing that hasn’t changed is the price that they are able to pay to obtain them. This has caused phone makers to offer something that could be purchased for a much lower cost as opposed to your Galaxy Note III’s and LG G2’s. Enter Motorola’s tiny sibling to the Moto X, the $179 Moto G that features some pretty impressive specs at the low cost to consumers. These are the type of phones that markets like the Asia/Pacific are getting and in turn we should start to see more and more devices like this available worldwide in the next couple years. Markets like the Asia/Pacific and some countries in Latin America and the EMEA have the largest potential for an area of growth opportunities, and this will more than likely continue to be the trend for quite some time. All three of these areas each make up over 20% of the growth in demand for smartphones that the world has seen. Not only that, but the Asia/Pacific also has the projected highest decrease in price for these devices over the next 5 years totalling 8.9%. Some bad news comes along with all the good news though, as US residents are actually expected to see an incline in pricing at about 2.1%. Were starting to see a larger number of lower end devices that still pack a punch, so it’ll be interesting to see what the bottom line will be without having to forfeit too much in the way of quality.